Written very fast: An Invitation (Not in Golden Ink) : (gen, 2457 words). Bilbo Baggins, leaving the Party and the Shire behind him sets off once again upon the road with Dwarves, and encounters old friends upon the way. I wrote this as a treat for Lunarium in the Innumerable Stars exchange.

I like the way that Bilbo simply decides that he's going to leave the Shire. Not for a quest, not because he has to, not because his relatives in the Shire are not perfectly worthy people in their way, and not even with a plan about where he's going. Just: OK, I've had enough of this! I'm out! And he ends up in Rivendell, which I think is an excellent demonstration that sometimes just being prepared to walk out and go somewhere else is a good move.

But I noticed the other day that connecting the dots, Bilbo leaves Bag End with Dwarves and goes off to visit Gildor Inglorion before he leaves the Shire. I wondered how the dwarves felt about that, and when Bilbo decided that Rivendell was where he was going.

Written very carefully: Faithless Is He That Says Farewell When the Road Darkens (gen 12692 words). The War of Wrath lasted for forty-two years. It was neither a swift nor a certain victory. Here, in the middle of that great war, Celebrimbor, Elrond and Elros meet and work together. Elrond and Celebrimbor have complex feelings about the House of Fëanor. Elros, not so much.

This was my Innumerable Stars exchange assignment, and I was a bit alarmed at first because I had matched the request on only this one group of characters, so there was no option to write anything else, and I had not worked out what I thought Celebrimbor did during the War of Wrath. But I like the eventual result. This is the first thing that I have completed and shared that uses my War of Wrath Timeline & Maps!

(Obviously more people read the swiftly-written treat than the carefully-worked-out assignment during the anon period of the exchange. This is the immutable Law of Sod. )

I've put it on a special high shelf. Obviously that meant the cats immediately knocked it off and whacked it around the floor until it got stuck under a sofa. But it's triple-strength, so that's fine, right? :-D

My kudos is honoured to be whacked about by your cats! I can't help feeling that this would be even more fun for them, though, if it was triple-strength catnip, not gold, which presumably would seem a bit boring to them, as toys go!